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Brand New

I feel like I have lived a thousand lives. Ones more tragic than the next. Then the sun hits every inch of my skin and I feel born again.

Different.
Brand new.

It’s the shadows from the golden rays that peek through the blinds. Straight from the outside, for I am always inside. It’s neither cold nor warm, just this glittery feeling of gold etched in your face and every parts of your skin. It’s what photographers try to photograph and emulate. With artificial lights and colors. Holding still until the light is just right.

It’s through the shining of this magic hour I think of everything. Every sun drenched memory. Every crazy golden moment. My breathing gets slower and my eyes start to well with tears. Each tear sparkling with the effervescent sun.

If I loved you last, I would love you best, I kept telling myself. I say this to the shadows that wave with each motion of the words. I don’t know what love is anymore. We are all rose gold and amber in this light. We are all love in this glittery way of speaking. We are all warmth in this sunset of light that we see before us. Yet, I don’t even know who the “you” is anymore. At this moment is could be anyone. I could have loved you more. I could have believed every single word you said. Instead, I find myself talking to shadows to keep away all these ghosts.

We were once all silver and now we’re gold. In this golden hour, one of the loneliest moments. As the gold sprinkles across its flecks on ever inch of the white room. When you’ve let everything go, it’s when you start all over again.

If I loved you last, I would love you best.
The sun sets and the darkness overcomes us.

Ten years doesn’t seem like a long time. When you still refer to everything in the past as 2006. Ten years ago, man. Ten years ago. 2006 was such a pivotal year of growing up for me. I find myself going back to that year in photographs, nostalgia, and through listening to albums that seem like came out yesterday.

Ten years ago, I sat in my parents guest bedroom, staring out the window. I laid in my bed watching the clouds go from grey to slate. Hearing every cloud rupture with anger and sadness, as the rain fell from the sky. In a room I didn’t grow up in. In a room, I felt like I kept coming back too. I was in-between places, still trying to figure out what I wanted. This wasn’t home but Fresno wasn’t home either. Where do I belong? Where do I fit in?

Ten years ago, I didn’t want to go back to school. Even though I knew getting older meant it would be harder for me to do things. My odds were against me. I was finding myself fearful of people and a fear of my peers is what always told me not to go back to school. It takes me 10 minutes to get out of my car to do simple tasks, without feeling like the world was against me. I didn’t realize I was sick. I didn’t realize that this wasn’t normal.

Ten years ago, I let the wrong people in. I let people hurt me. I let people use me. I let people cloud my judgement of what good really was. Instead I harbored a pain so great that caused me to cut open my outsides, to understand what my insides were feeling. I was burning in this vessel of a body, with this need to please everyone. To be there for everyone, while people have done nothing but watch me fade in the background.

Ten years ago, I thought I was going to marry a variety of different people. A drummer in one band, a bass player in another. Plotting how one day they would look at me differently then they had in the past. That I wouldn’t be self-conscious. I wouldn’t be awkward. They would look straight into me, as I have looked up at them, many times before.

Ten years ago, I feel in love too easily. Always someone different. Always people I shouldn’t have loved. But I wanted to love as I always felt in the deep depths of my heart. How they play out in movies and we see on the big screen. I was hopeless in wanting something I wasn’t prepared to understand. In a way I used people. I just wanted what everyone else had. A hand to hold to keep themselves from falling apart. Because sad was better than lonely. And now I can’t remember the name of the first boy I kissed.

Ten years ago, I wanted amazing things to happen to me. I wanted to stand in an open place and watch life happen to me. In a big city, miles away from my mediocre small town. Far from the same people I see every day. Maybe if for once instead of running, I would finally allow things to happen. Watch love open doors, see my careers unfold, watch myself change from strange into something beautiful. I waited forever for things to happen. I waited for people to move. I waited for things to happen. I waited too long and feel as if I am running out of time.

Ten years ago, an album came out that changed my life. I didn’t think it would. Many albums come and go and still I remember this as if it was yesterday. From the weather changing from the warm fall days to the chill of cold of the soon to be winter months. How it felt wrong to buy it from some mass production corporation, how I needed to purchase the album how I had purchased all their albums. Straight from the band, straight from the source. How I ripped open the package and watched my life change in front of my eyes. No one understands how that feels. How something so simple as opening a padded envelope could change your life in so many magical ways. How I needed to get out of my house and play every song loudly. Loud enough to where my insides would wake up. How every cigarette I smoked, I exhaled out the smoke and watched the smoke slowly leave my lungs open to the cold air. The rain kept falling, as this soundtrack continued to play. How perfect this seemed. My favorite band, playing the songs that for that moment I didn’t understand. It didn’t matter how many times the windshield wipers wiped my windshield clear, the rain still managed to leave a mark. Which is how I feel about this album. No matter how many times I try to wipe this away, a small mark still remains. I could write forever about every line in the songs. I could. I have. But today, I want to live in it’s memory.

Ten years ago, I didn’t understand. Ten years later, I finally know. We are not suppose to fit in. We are not suppose to be normal. Sometimes you don’t realize how bad you’re hurting until the years pass and you become someone else. Someone completely different then the person you were ten years ago. Its hard to come out of the darkness and back into the light. It’s hard to understand that even though we feel completely alone, we are never truly alone. Even when you think you can’t start over, life throws you something completely unexpected.

Today, I watch the rain fall from the sky to the tops of each tree and rooftop, from some place far from home. I think back on those memories. I think back to my sentiments and feelings. Ten years ago, I had no idea where I was going. I stopped believing in love. I stopped believing in myself in the years in took to get here. I stopped wanting to marry the boys that would never love me. I stopped dying for a hand to hold. Ten years ago, seemed like such a long time ago. Now, I sit here wondering what happens next.

I want to remember people how they were. The exact image they portrayed, very long ago in a nostalgic paradise. Where time stood still and you remained in your pristine condition. If only photographs could talk, would I be able to point you out completely. Storytelling is far to good to tell, then by photographic memory.

That’s where I keep you.

Locked away in the vaults of my memory. Hidden in the crevices of my brain, locked away under stories and memories. It doesn’t matter what I do, I continue to search for you. Across the country, across the state, across the faces of the people I loved. Maybe it has always been you. Maybe it was this illusion of staying in one place or coming back home to something. It didn’t matter. People will scan across these words thinking its about a specific person and it’s not. Sometimes there’s that one person you want to forget but you keep being reminded of. Sometimes you want to keep stories personal, and as you get older you can’t keep things to yourself anymore.

I watch buildings change. I watch people grow up. I look at places that meant the world to me, go through different variations of themselves that they become nonexistent. I watch the cities I spent my youth in become gentrified garbage, instead of the kitschy places they used to be. I love the nostalgia, I love the stories, and I know they can’t go on forever. Buildings change, people grow up, and even people we once loved have a reality. Sometimes I think I love you, and then I become the 18 year old with bold expectations. Now a days it’s just a silly notion of my youth. Silly memories of never wanting to grow up. Staying up all night, looking up at the stars, and wishing to be in bigger cities with the people that meant the most to you.

You have become different heroic expectations in many aspects of my stories. Lingering in and out of my mind, coming and going just as you please. Some days I want badly to hate you, but I can’t. Other times I just wished you never existed. Deep down a part of me knows that I am officially crazy. The person I believe you to be and the person you really are, are two different people. This image I keep of you doesn’t exist to anyone else but myself. I feel crazy to even believe who I think you are. The thing with fantasies is that people’s realities are far to realistic. To know who you truly are in reality, kills the dream I have conjured up in my mind. You existed to me. Even if no one believes me. Every hero I write is based on stories of the past and the person I believed you to be. But the past is the past, I can’t keep searching for you in faces of people that no longer exist. I can’t keep holding a candle to a person that is kept only in stories of a nostalgic paradise. When you grow up, you have to let go of the things you once loved. Making way for new memories and journeys, new loves and expectations. Maybe I will always be just jealous cause we’re young and in love, but I have to grow up some time.

18-year-olds grow up to be 33-year-olds. Even you had to grow up some time. You’ll always be the hero at the end of every one of my stories.

If I don’t write this down, I will forget something. All I want is to remember everything exactly how it happened, how it felt. Not miss any single piece of it. Either way posting feelings in my head and down on paper, I am bound to forget something. I will forget feelings, placement, settings, smells, every little detail that make up moments that I am desperately trying to remember.

It’s hard to explain it to people. To people that didn’t live the life I did. That didn’t follow a band or a piece of music because they loved it. Nobody will understand that. How it felt to stomp your feet, clap your hands, and sing every line from your favorite song out loud for all to hear. You start remembering basement venues in sketchy parts of towns, filled with cigarette smoke. Remembering salutations and how fearless you felt at 17. Night thats went on forever, until the lights came on. I can’t talk to a single soul about it. I can’t ask someone how it felt to meet people or see places or conversations I kept in my head. Every day I want to forget but the melody brings it all back. It’s never how far I’ve come but it’s where I’ve been. How I got this far and why I keep coming back for more.

Going on airplanes in route to home, brings back memories of things that have happened briefly, but really was just yesterday. You can’t go back, you can only move forward. Yet things that happened so recently tend to come back like a distant memory. You think about everything and everyone. Moments, feelings, and how perfectly they wrap themselves up in a soundtrack of songs I used to love. A different variety of things but as you grow up, your heart forgets, moves on and dies just a little. I don’t remember why I hate the things of my past but yet I can’t help but succumb to the nostalgia of it all. I hated this band, I hated the people, I hated the music, because they brought back with these memories of a person I don’t recognize anymore. I get it. We all have to grow up sometimes. We all have to get jobs, pay bills and grow up from the fucked up kid from yesterday. But can’t we just pretend we are back there? Back to the 18 year olds wearing dark eyeliner and black hoodies. Back to this notion that we can stay 18 forever?

Peter Pan has his Neverland, where he stays childlike forever. Where do I go to be with the feelings of my younger self, with the wisdom of my adult self? I miss that. I can sing loud and along with the best of them. But still I miss that even as we get older we lose track of who we used to be. I don’t want to be 18 forever, but I want the feeling of pretending I want to. If I could take it all back I would. Take back the sounds, the wounds, the life in the memories. How easily melodies become soundtracks pierced together in our lives. How feelings go as season leave and yet we can’t forget them. Was I missing out or always there? The fear of missing something that wasn’t always there. The photographs you take and the feelings trapped inside of them. Am I missing out?

When you love something so much you place it high upon a pedestal. High above the sky it becomes completely untouchable. Nothing can beat this thing, this moment, this feeling is untouchable. Others have tried, failed, and been nothing but cheap imitations of what you hold dear. When you’re young nothing can reach you, no matter how hard people try. Nothing and no one can come between what you love. I have done a lot of foolish things in my life, but nothing I regret. I loved and I lost, and I put feelings into things that weren’t certain. That’s human nature and as much as you escape the past, all you can do is move forward.

I love a lot of things, but as I got older this love changed as the images did on this status symbol. I loved a lot of bands, a lot of people, and a lot of things I probably shouldn’t have. A part of me wants to hate these images of the past, but the more I close my eyes wanting to forget, I can’t. The foundations of this pedestal is crumbling down and with it, I want to watch all the memories come tumbling down as well. Yet, I find myself disappearing to fix and fill the holes in the foundation. I hated this band for all the reasons I shouldn’t, then loved it for all the reasons I should. In your memories nobody ages, everyone remains the same. You keep conversations in your head and faces sealed in glass cases of everything you want to remember. Even if it hurts you, you still want to keep it. Close to you, when you need it the most.

Few grey hairs later, pit scars healed, and ear drums finally back to normal; I think of this band. This band that seemed completely untouchable. That could do no wrong in my eyes. Even when the worst was bad, I still had the music to hold me through. As I sit in this seat on my way to see them for the first time in years, I get nostalgic for them. I hated this band for so many things through the years, that it’s taken me a great deal of time to come to terms with how I feel. When you grow up you forget that everyone else has too. Maybe in a way this was my sad attempt of holding on to the past, that I have desperately tried to escape. While I have alienated legions of former friends, I realized I missed that nostalgic connection of recollection. Listening to albums and singing every word puts you right back where you started. An insecure person afraid of the world but in love with literal words that are entangled in melody. I am too old to wish to be 18 again. Too old to sleep on floors and dissect every words in every song.

Today, I am transported back to a time where being stuck between lines of a song, and singing along with your best friend was all you could ever ask for. For a moment, I could live forever. Even if it’s just for a day.

My body feels heavy and the more I gasp for air, the more I can’t breathe. The air fills every open space and I still clench my chest for more. I am suffocating in this dry land, I am suffocating with thoughts closing in on every last bit of my heart. This is the end. This is how I go. The thoughts that cloud my thinking and suffocating my breathing. This is how I disappear, how the memories vanish and wash away to shore. I need a clean escape, a new beginning and everything else that follows with that.

We all want that escape to take us away from this reality. Take us far away from whats familiar and lead us straight into the unknown. All I want is some piece of mind. Some place that helps me breathe again. Some place so deep within my soul that I can find everything I am looking for. Its not here on land, its not here in this city, its somewhere near the water with its clear blue oceanic views. Take me to the ocean with this clear blue waters. Take me to the sands as white as snow. Take me far away from this reality and help me reach the shore. Let the waters run through my body and allow the currents to wash me out to sea.

If I sink to the bottom of the ocean, no one will find me. They’ll mourn my life but they’ll never have me. I watch every inch of my skin become consumed under water. Watch the tides come tell me their secrets as they reach the shore. I’ll let the water fill my lungs and only then will I breathe again. It’s only in water that I feel whole again. It’s only in water that the heaviness in my heart becomes completely weightless. My body is the stone that slowly sinks down in the sea. Watching the water consume my body, I feel weightless. I am sinking but I feel weightless. As cliche as it sounds, I feel like I am finding my way back home.

Its in this water that I feel like this life wasn’t good enough for me. That I could have been anything I wanted to be, but failed miserably. I could change my life into whatever I want it to be. I can finally find my way back home. Its in these waters that I feel clean. Clean from the bullshit necessities of yesterday. Clean from the juvenile way of thinking. Clean from the belief that I haven’t done anything with my life. I clench my chest and for the first time I can breathe again. I don’t find myself gasping for air. Instead I find my beating heart, its in the moment, I feel home.

This silent disconnect from the world. Floating in the sea and feeling the weight of the world pull you down into the ocean. Drowning yourself in the pain of your own sorrows. Lifeless with no will to fight anymore. The words that you’ve allowed to infect your soul just weighing you down one by one. Thinking of every memory of your past and watch it come apart in your present. Knowing better than the truth and watching yourself succumbing to it’s reality. The lies of someone else’s belief of the truth. The broken parts you can’t help but watch fall even further apart. Believing the same lies and beating yourself up from being fooled for the last time. Deep down you fall deeper in the ocean of these regrets. Knowing better but wishing things had been different. Words were once wishes and desires for something better. Clinging for hope in the mist of desperation. There was once something held so beautifully and now you watch it wash away the deeper you fall. Below the surface and deeper into the abyss. You become the dead weight that others so proudly called you. Lifeless and alone.

I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean.

It’s harder to breathe. The venom filled garbage you tell yourself is what suffocates you. You lose the air that you once held so superior above everything else. Replacing it with every negative aspect of your life. The sorrow, the sadness, and at times even the madness. Asking for things to change and accepting the every ounce of the bullshit you feel. Everything inside of you just begging to be set free but no matter how many times you say the words you don’t believe them. The will you had to continue on has frozen inside and sunk below sea level. Trying desperately to grasp it and all you have left are water filled lungs and this emptiness inside. You go through the movements but still feel nothing. Setting your sails up for failure and watching yourself disappear towards the sea. The water is the only thing that will calm your bones. Calm the craziness of the storm that you hold inside of you. Suppressing the screams of madness you hide from the world.

Watching this storm throw your body off course. The rain merged with the tears and all you want is to succumb to it. Allowing the words to cut through you as the wind does. The storm falls short on your own sadness and the more you wish for yourself to wash up on the shore, you can’t. You fall deeper into the sea wishing to disappear. No one knows your sadness better than this storm. The words that haunt you and wash you off course. The salt of your tears matched perfectly with the sea.

But the wrong words will strand you.

Believing those lies. Believing even the kindest of hearts could ever be so impure. Knowing how much love is a risk and at any given moment it will strand you. Still you hold on to the words as unkind as they are because deep down you believe them. They hurt more than anything and still like clockwork you believe them. They were once the hope to get better and now they’re the stones that sink you straight to the bottom. The deep blue sea is a forgiving place but all you want to do is forget. Forgetting is easy for the sailors that play their part. You can’t control the emotions of others, therefore you throw yourself from the sand further to the sea. Sailing away to disappear to forget everything. Everything that caused an ounce of sadness. Everything that made the hurt of heartbreak. Everything that made the illusion of disappearing a dream and the running away a fantasy. You can’t escape the words as much as you can’t escape the sea. The more you think you need someone is the day they let you down. The day they go from saint to sinner, from sailor to stranger.

Needing you is needing forgiveness from a storm. Needing you is needing rain in a never ending drought. Needing you is like needing water in my lungs.